by Jill Gregory
“For an intelligent woman you’re damned close to stupid,” he said, echoing her words with light mockery. But there was a gentleness in his tone and in the hands that held her that made her forget about struggling. She froze and glared up at him, uncertainty holding her motionless beneath the shimmering blue sky.
Against all reason, against all of his good intentions, Wolf felt desire quickening in his blood. She was as wild as a mustang caught fresh from the hills—untamed, wary, and spooked. Wolf wanted inexplicably to gentle her.
Suddenly his mouth quirked upward at the absurdity of comparing this lovely, sensuous Rebeccah Rawlings to a horse.
“What’re you smiling at?” she demanded, suspicion once more darkening her eyes.
“I’m thinking about—”
“Liar.”
“Now you’re hurting my feelings.”
His wounded air sent a wave of irritation through her. “Oh, I forgot,” she said, yanking free of his arms. “Lawmen don’t lie. Lawmen are good, pure, honest, upright—”
“Lawmen are men, Rebeccah,” Wolf said tautly, his arms flashing out to snare her tight against him once more. Her glowing, sunlit face upturned toward him sent his blood pounding and turned his voice husky. “Flesh-and-blood men. Don’t ever forget that.”
How could I? Rebeccah wondered dazedly, when he was kissing her with such succulent, demanding kisses, again and again, holding her so tightly within those corded arms, she might have felt trapped but instead felt oddly, gloriously free.
Wolf was touching her breasts, cupping them in his hands, freeing them from the confines of her scooped-neck blouse while all the while his mouth sent flames of heat searing through her to the very depths of her soul. The autumn air whistling down from the mountains was cool, but there in her open, isolated yard Rebeccah felt herself burning up, like a candle set aflame. Her fingers flew to the buttons of his shirt, flinging them apart. She pressed wild kisses against his bare skin, closing her eyes as he tugged at her skirt.
Then the pounding of approaching hoofbeats startled them both out of the fever engulfing them.
“Who is it?” Rebeccah gasped, yanking her blouse frantically into place.
Wolf was already squinting out toward the road.
“Navarro.” There was an edge of grimness in his tone and in the gray depths of his eyes as he started buttoning his shirt.
Chance Navarro. Oddly enough, with all she’d forgotten from the previous evening, she vividly recalled her engaging, wavy-haired dancing partner. As Rebeccah hastily smoothed her hair, shook out her skirt, and then, her cheeks still burning, put several yards between herself and Wolf, she cast a fleeting glance at his taut, flushed face. Was he jealous? Or merely annoyed with Navarro because he’d interrupted them?
Rebeccah could only be grateful that someone had brought an end to her mad sojourn into passion. Being alone with Wolf Bodine destroyed all her good sense and reason, and melted her defenses. Defenses? she asked herself bitterly, taking deep breaths of cool air. What defenses? When it came to Wolf Bodine, she had no defenses at all.
“Good morning, Miss Rawlings,” Chance called out as he reined in his big bay before them. Today he wore an elegant broadcloth suit, string tie, and brocade vest, with his derby set at a jaunty angle upon his head. “I just wanted to see if you were all right,” he drawled, “but I see that you’ve still got the deadliest sheriff in the West to protect you.”
Wolf regarded him through narrowed eyes. “I reckon I’m here to do whatever Miss Rawlings needs me to do,” he returned cryptically, hooking his thumbs in his gunbelt.
Rebeccah tried to blot out everything that had happened a few moments ago. She tried to think about this very handsome and very appealing Chance Navarro. But she was intensely conscious of Wolf’s virile presence, of the way he had touched her, aroused her, and brought her to a point of such heated desire that she had nearly made love to him a scant few moments ago. She quivered like a drawn bowstring when he sauntered to her side and draped an arm across her shoulders.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. Navarro?” she offered weakly, hoping he wouldn’t notice how rapidly she was breathing, or how her cheeks burned.
But Wolf answered before Chance could get out a single word.
“Don’t trouble yourself, Rebeccah. He’s leaving. He only came out to make sure you were all right. Well, any fool can see that you are, so ...” He threw a meaningful glance at the other man, still seated on his horse. “Adiós, Navarro.”
Chance chuckled, and swung down from his bay with the same smooth grace he’d exhibited while dancing. “But there was something else I wanted to talk to Miss Rawlings about, Sheriff. That can wait until we’re alone, though. Meantime, Rebeccah—I can call you Rebeccah, can’t I? I’ve got to say you look right pretty this morning. Doesn’t she, Sheriff? Have you ever in all your days seen a prettier woman?”
Rebeccah held her breath as she waited for Wolf’s reply.
She is the most beautiful, complicated, and extraordinary woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. And if you value your hide, Navarro, you’ll stay away from her.
Aloud, Wolf said, without once glancing in Rebeccah’s direction, “I’m in no mood to engage in a flattery contest with you, Navarro. Miss Rawlings and I have some important business to discuss. Come back another time and try to turn her head, if you reckon it’ll do you any good, but right now we’re busy.”
“I don’t think I like your tone, Bodine,” Chance growled, the genial smile fading from his face and an indignant flush replacing it. “Maybe we should just ask Miss Rawlings whose company she prefers at this moment....”
“Gentlemen, this is a fascinating exchange, and I’m honored to be the subject of such attention, but I have too many chores to attend to this morning to stand around jabbering with a couple of roosters both trying to ruffle the other’s tailfeathers. Good day to both of you.”
And without another glance at either one of them she turned on her heel and stalked into the house. Slamming the door, Rebeccah leaned against it, listening for sounds of retreating hoofbeats. Part of her wanted Wolf to stay, to continue where they’d left off, and another part of her prayed he would leave and give her time to think.
When she heard hoofbeats, she went to the window and saw Wolf Bodine riding toward his own property, and Chance Navarro headed back in the direction of town. Her gaze followed Wolf, and she swallowed back the urge to race, shouting, after him. But as she watched, Navarro reined in his horse and turned around. To her astonishment he galloped right back the way he had come, halting the bay in her front yard.
“What is it?” she demanded, coming out onto the porch again, staring at him in bewilderment.
“I don’t give up that easily.” He dismounted with a soft thud, his boots scattering dust as he walked toward her. “Bodine never would have left us alone if he’d thought I was staying, so I let him believe I was leaving.” He came up the steps of the porch and seized her hands. “Rebeccah, are you sure you’re all right? I was worried about you last night.”
“I’m fine.” She spoke quickly, hoping he wouldn’t notice how distracted she was. “I’m horribly embarrassed that I got drunk on two glasses of huckleberry wine, but other than that I’m fine.”
He was very handsome. It was his dancing green eyes and his earnest grin that made him so disarmingly appealing, she decided. That and the smooth, wiry way he moved, the quick flash of intelligence in his eyes. That’s right, think about him. Don’t think about Wolf. “I’ve never before made a fool of myself like that, Mr. Navarro, so please don’t fancy I make a habit of it.”
“I’d never think such a thing. Besides, you didn’t make a fool of yourself at all. You were downright adorable.” That quick, lightning grin again that seemed to flash a hole clear through her. “I wanted to make sure the sheriff didn’t take advantage of you. He insisted on bringing you home, despite the fact that Mr. Pritchard offered and so did I.”
“He did? I mean, yo
u did? How kind.”
“I’m not kind at all,” he told her softly. He reached out a strong, slender white hand to cup her face very gently, as if her chin was made of spun glass. “I did it for selfish reasons.”
For a moment Rebeccah found herself lost in those provocative moss-green eyes. Then she coolly removed his hand and stepped back a pace. “You’re being rather forward, Mr. Navarro,” she said steadily, but she couldn’t help smiling at him.
“That’s a fault of mine,” he admitted. “When I see a beautiful woman, a woman of great charm and intelligence, I just have to let her know that I’m loco about her.”
“When I hear a man say flattering things like that, I just can’t help but wonder exactly what he’s after,” she returned sweetly.
Chance laughed. “Well, for one thing, I’d like you to call me Chance. Most everybody does. For another I’d like to get to know you better. And if you have doubts about my reputation, Rebeccah, you’re a smart gal. And you’re on the right track. I’m no good. Let me say that straight off. I like to move around, I hate ordinary chores and timetables and talking about the weather. I like riding fast and hard, staying up all night gambling, dancing with a pretty girl, doing something different and meeting someone new every day. I also have a past. Right now I’m a gambler. But I’ve been a lot of things—a cowboy, trail guide, prospector. Never any one thing for long. The good part is I found out along the way that my luck didn’t revolve around discovering gold but in winning it. Every time I take a chance in a poker game or at a roulette wheel”—he shrugged, the smile still playing around the corners of his mouth—“well, let’s just say fortune smiles on me again and again. My lucky chances pay off. That’s why I picked my name.” He suddenly swept his hat off his head and crushed it to his chest. “I never stay too long in any one town—it’s in my nature to drift, I reckon, but I’ve been in Powder Creek for weeks now, ever since I heard about you at that town meeting. You had the whole town in an uproar. It made me curious to meet you. I had a hunch you were someone I should meet, someone different from everyone else, not just an ordinary woman. And Rebeccah,” he added, chuckling, “you should know that my hunches nearly always pay off.”
The magpie chattered from the tree again. The autumn sun dappled shadows across the yard and glinted upon Chance Navarro’s neat black hair.
“I don’t know if it’s luck or fate or chance or what that brought me to Powder Creek in the first place,” he finished, “but I’ve been enjoying my stay. And I think I’d enjoy it a lot more if you’d have supper with me in town tomorrow night.”
Rebeccah could only stare at him, overwhelmed by his lengthy speech. She knew she shouldn’t trust him—the things he had told her hardly revealed a steady character—and yet there was something so disarmingly open about him, so delightfully breezy and unpredictable, that she found herself liking him despite it all. And above all, it was easy to be with him. Her feelings for Chance Navarro were so much less complicated than those for Wolf.
“All right—under one condition,” she said. “Over supper you must tell me everything that happened at the schoolhouse last night—from the moment l began to dance with Sheriff Bodine until I left with him later. All that I said, all that I did, as far as you know. Deal?”
“Deal.” Chance squeezed her hands and chuckled. He backed down the steps. “You worry too much, honey. I can tell you’re wondering what people thought when you had a bit too much to drink. Well, why should you care a hoot about that? A woman as lovely and full of life as you are should be able to do anything she pleases and to hell with anyone who doesn’t like it.”
He made it sound so easy, Rebeccah reflected wryly, watching him ride off with a wave and a grin. She waited until his dark-clad figure had disappeared across the golden-gray buffalo grass, which rose like a sea for miles around, before returning to the kitchen to scrape and wash the breakfast plates. For some reason she was drawn to Chance Navarro.
He reminds me of Bear. In some strange way the same philosophy expressed by Chance had guided her father as well. He, too, had never stayed in one place for long, had never thought rules or chores or ordinary, everyday living applied to him. Something in her responded to this free-spirited philosophy. Of course she didn’t think it applied to committing crimes, to stealing other people’s gold or money, but why should she be so worried about what anyone thought here in Powder Creek?
Especially Wolf Bodine. He meant nothing to her. Didn’t he?
Yet he had brought her home from the dance, watched over her through the night, chopped her wood, and promised to protect her from Neely Stoner and the others. And something else.
He had very nearly made love to her out in the yard a short time ago.
Rebeccah paused, his plate in her hand. The strangest part of it all was that she had wanted him to make love to her.
She hadn’t been afraid. She hadn’t wanted to stop. The icy panic and nausea had not risen up to blot out all of the pleasure that she was feeling.
Even in her girlhood dreams Rebeccah had never wanted Wolf to undress her or touch the intimate parts of her body or do the things with her that a man and woman in love normally did. She’d dreamed of him kissing her, yes. Of him telling her she was beautiful and that he loved her, yes. But somehow or other the dreams had always faded to a blurry end before anything else had happened, anything remotely similar to what Neely Stoner had done.
But when Wolf had caressed her with those fierce, knowing hands, when he had reached for her, taken over her senses with his kisses and commanded her body with his passionate need, she had known only sweet, hot yearning—not fear, not revulsion.
The soapy plate slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. Rebeccah bent to gather up the shards, lost in thought.
If only he loved me, she thought miserably, rising and placing the broken pieces of crockery on a towel. Then there might be some hope. ...
She could no longer deny that she loved Wolf. She loved him with all of her poor, stubborn heart. And she knew that she loved him as he was now, here, in Powder Creek. It was not the memories of that decent young lawman in Arizona that haunted her thoughts and dreams of late, but of Wolf, the tall, rugged sheriff who’d tried to scare her out of town. She loved this man who was so difficult to know, who teased her and protected her and looked out for his mother and his son, who stomped off when she came to dinner and saved her from waltzing with Waylon Pritchard, who drove her home when she was drunk and chopped her wood while she slept and kissed her in the open yard until she was ready to swoon. ...
Wolf.
Could a man like Wolf Bodine ever love an outlaw’s daughter? Could his intentions be honorable toward her, his feelings any deeper than base, physical lust?
How am I to know? she wondered in despair as she pressed her eyes closed. I understand so little about men when it comes to love, and certainly nothing about Wolf Bodine. For all I know, he will never love any woman the way he loved his dead wife.
But she did know some things about him, Rebeccah realized slowly, her hands dropping to her sides. I know that he is decent and good, that he cares for his family and his town, that he despises dishonesty, and values justice and law.
Maybe that is enough, a voice whispered inside of her. Maybe you know enough to understand him, enough to make him love you in return.
But Rebeccah, feeling weary and confused, wasn’t at all sure that it was.
16
“Mountain,” Rebeccah repeated in a clear, ringing voice. She nodded at Evan Kramer, seated in the third row. “Try,” she said encouragingly, as a panicked look flitted across the boy’s face.
“M-o-n-t-a-n,” he mumbled, a scarlet flush crawling up his neck.
Rebeccah gave him a heartening smile. “Not quite, but you were close. You did spell almost all of Montana. Cara Sue, can you spell mountain for us?”
“M-o-u-n-t-a-i-n,” the pigtailed child recited proudly.
“Excellent. Now, who can tell me
the names of our two largest rivers here in the Montana Territory? They run along right here on the map,” she added, tracing the pointer along two different winding routes. “Does anyone know? Billy?”
“The Missouri River and the Yellowstone,” Billy Bodine replied in a subdued tone, and Mary Brady, who’d been waving her hand in the air, nodded agreement.
“Good. All right, class, there are ten more spelling words to copy down this week, all having to do with geography. I’ve written them on the blackboard, and I want you all to write them five times each. You may begin.”
Outside the schoolhouse window the first snowflakes of the year tumbled down from an ash-gray sky. It was only the middle of October, yet crunchy frost covered the landscape, and the air rushed bitter cold through the foothills and valleys, soaring over the mountain lakes and buffeting the open plains.
When the school day ended, Rebeccah watched the children tug on their woolen coats and scarves and mittens with an odd tightness in her throat. How had they become so dear to her, these varied faces? Large and small, homely and charming, quick-witted and dull. She knew them all, cared for them all. How had it happened in only a few short weeks?
“Good day, Toby. Button your coat, Joey. Thank you for the apples, Cara Sue,” she called as she stood at the door and watched them file quickly past her. “Don’t forget, Friday is the spelling bee!”
As she turned from the door, she saw that, as usual, Billy Bodine had lingered behind. He was studying the map of the United States displayed at the front of the classroom, waiting for her to see the other children off.
“Yes, Billy, what can I do for you?” Rebeccah asked. She strolled back to her desk and began gathering up her books and papers.
“I have a question, Miss Rawlings.”
“Go ahead.”
She expected him to ask her something about the arithmetic assignment or the Yellowstone River or to give him her opinion of last week’s essay—any one of the typical questions that he posed to her most days after school, when he really only wanted a few extra minutes of her time and attention. But instead he caught her completely off guard.